1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document management technique.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, upon managing digital documents, it is a common practice to classify and organize documents using a folder tree. (This conventional folder will be referred to as a “normal folder” hereinafter.) By allocating documents in a classification system having a tree structure, a document search is facilitated. There is only one classification system, and documents are classified to one space. However, it is difficult to classify documents using one classification system. In order to cope with searches with various intentions, it is preferable to associate documents with a plurality of classification systems. As a technique which implements this, a virtual folder technique is known. With the virtual folder technique, a plurality of folder trees are built using virtual folders, and documents can be allocated in these plurality of folder trees. A search folder as one type of virtual folders has a search condition used to specify documents, and can include documents that match the condition as folder elements (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-057128). This technique has a merit of automatically allocating documents if the user does not explicitly allocate documents in folder trees. As the search condition, attribute information of documents is used. Upon execution of management using a search folder, how to assign this attribute information without any load on the user poses a problem, and for example, a technique using a folder name is available (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-269121).
However, upon making transition of documents which are conventionally managed using a normal folder tree to an environment that manages them using search folders, problems that cannot be solved by the aforementioned technique alone still remain. That is, problems, for example, how to give a search condition of each search folder and how to use information classified using hierarchies in the normal folder tree upon making the transition, still remain unsolved.